Various commercial dispensers are known and widely used in the art for dispensing a supply of interconnected lottery tickets. Typically, the lottery tickets are provided to a commercial establishment in a stack or “brick” of interconnected, fan-folded tickets. The stack of tickets is placed into a compartment of a dispenser that typically holds a plurality of different lottery tickets. For example, a known dispenser includes two side-by-side compartments within the same housing, with multiple dispensers being stacked on each other. These dispensers may be placed on the retail counter, on a shelf, supported on a wall, and the like, typically at the point of check-out. To dispense the tickets, a clerk pulls one or more of the tickets from a respective dispensing slot in the dispenser and tears or otherwise separates the tickets along a pre-formed separation line. The conventional dispensers are typically transparent so that the customer can view their ticket being pulled and separated from the stack of tickets.
There are drawbacks to the conventional dispensers for fan-folded lottery tickets. For example, the most valuable space in a commercial establishment is often the counter space at the point of checkout, which is typically where the lottery tickets are sold and dispensed by the retail clerk. The conventional dispensers for blocks of fan-folded tickets make inefficient use of this valuable space. Because of the folded nature of the block of tickets, the dispenser compartment must be sized so as to accommodate the “throwback” space needed at the top of the stack in order for the tickets to unfold from the stack as they are dispensed. This space is substantial and is essentially wasted, particularly for an industry standard 2″ by 4″ lottery ticket. The dispensers are thus unnecessarily “tall” relative to the initial stack height of the block of tickets. Stacking of the dispensers on top of each other only exacerbates this problem.
Also, the side-by-side compartment configuration of the conventional dispensers is problematic. When the dispenser is placed on a counter, for example the checkout counter, other items cannot be placed in front of the dispenser without blocking the dispenser from the customer's view. Typically, it is the view of the tickets through the dispenser that serves to advertise the particular lottery game, and it is important that the customers have a clear view of the dispenser and tickets within the dispenser. Thus, although not particularly deep, a dual compartment dispenser takes up a relatively wide and valuable swath of the counter.
Yet another drawback to the conventional dispensers occurs in loading the devices. Such dispensers are typically top loaded and it is often the case that multiple dispensers are stacked on top of each other. To replace a block of tickets in the lowermost dispenser, the upper dispensers must be removed and relocated, which can be a time consuming and troublesome task.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,021,493 to Brickwood describes a disposable single-ticket dispenser for dispensing a single stack of fan-folded lottery tickets. The dispenser is provided in the form of a flat blank of material that can be folded by the retail establishment into the final dispenser form. Graphics or other indicia related to the particular type of lottery game may be printed on the dispenser walls. The dispenser is made of relatively inexpensive material and is discarded after the tickets have been sold. The dispenser is described as having a width and length essentially equal to the dimensions of the lottery ticket. However, the dispenser has a height significantly greater than the stack of folded tickets to accommodate the throwback space needed to unfold and dispense the tickets. Also, establishments typically promote multiple lottery games, which would require multiple ones of the single-ticket dispensers on or around the counter.
Accordingly, a need still exists for a more efficient means for dispensing strips of interconnected lottery tickets.